Holiday travelers getting early jump on snow

Winter storm warnings, watches and advisories are in effect from North Carolina to Maine ahead of the major winter storm that will hit the highly populated East Coast on Wednesday, which is one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Winter storm warnings, watches and advisories are in effect from North Carolina to Maine ahead of the major winter storm that will hit the highly populated East Coast on Wednesday, which is one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Dan Sheehan and Scott KrausOf The Morning Call

Will snow disrupt travelers' lives?

Long before noon Tuesday, the streets and highways around the Lehigh Valley already had that talcum-powdered look of pre-treatment, a sure sign — as sure as the lurid Weather Channel radar maps — that snow was on the way.

Yes, snow was on the way, and so were travelers hoping to beat the weather by departing a day earlier than anticipated for Thanksgiving travels. Thomas and Jean McMorris had left their home in Salem, N.Y. — near the Vermont border — early in the morning and were planning to travel straight through to their daughter's home in Raleigh, N.C.

"We left a whole day early because we heard it was coming," said Jean McMorris, standing by the couple's muscular-looking Camaro at the Interstate 78 rest area in Williams Township.

Tom McMorris said they usually break up the 15-hour trip over two days but forecasts convinced them otherwise.

"Virginia's going to get snow and that's where we were going to stay," he said.

And so it was for traveler after traveler — eyeing the forecast and adjusting accordingly. Will and Kathleen Dehler of Breezy Point, N.Y., had set out a day early to get to their daughter's house in South Carolina, but their other daughter, in Connecticut, wasn't planning to leave until Wednesday.

"Thanksgiving dinner may be Friday, but that's OK," Will Dehler said.

The storm, with the classically unpredictable path and timing of a Nor'easter, was expected to bring snow and rain across the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast Wednesday, with 3-6 inches of snow falling in the Lehigh Valley and higher amounts in the Poconos and points north.

Talk about bad timing. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the busiest travel day of the year. AAA Travel had projected 46.3 million Americans would journey 50 miles or more from home during the Thanksgiving period, the highest volume since 2007 and a 4.2 percent increase over last year.

Almost 90 percent will travel by highway. And the gas prices — a national average of $2.81 a gallon, about 46 cents cheaper than last year — might not be sufficient recompense for the misery of slick, perilous driving.

Tuesday's low pewter skies and gusts of wind made it feel like snow, even though the temperatures were in the 50s. It was an unhappy reminder of last winter, among the worst ever in the Lehigh Valley with 66.9 inches of snow — the fourth highest total on record — and long, shivery stretches inside the polar vortex.

"We're supposed to get 8 inches tomorrow where we live," said another rest stop patron, Wendy Redlin. She was bound for Cincinnati with her husband, Jim, from the couple's home in Westchester County, N.Y.

Air travelers were likewise wary of potential travel trouble. Lauren and Joel Halonen of Somerville, N.J., make the trek to Detroit every Thanksgiving, but they're all about convenience. So, rather than driving the 30 minutes to crowded Newark, they drove an hour to Lehigh Valley International Airport.

And rather than contend with crowds on Wednesday and Sunday, they booked their flights for Tuesday and Saturday.

"We're avoiding the disaster," Lauren Halonen said. "Why would he want to get stuck in that, when this is so easy?"

Airport Executive Director Charles Everett Jr. said the Halonens were an exception. Most fliers still plan to leave Wednesday. The 50 flights in and out of LVIA are more than 90 percent full. And though they'll likely have to contend with runway snow and ice, none have been canceled.

So, de-icing materials are being applied, more than a dozen plows are on call, and the airport has reserved hotel rooms in case workers have to be close by to handle the storm.

"Wednesday is the busiest travel day of the year for us," Everett said. 'We've done all we need to do to be ready for the people and the storm."

The Lehigh Valley's municipalities, battered by last winter's incessant snow, are also ready.

Allentown's interim public works director, Craig Messinger, said plows and salt spreaders were mounted on 43 trucks. The city had an ample supply of road salt and anti-skid material, he said.

Bethlehem Public Works Director Mike Alkhal said officials are monitoring the temperature to see if they will have to switch from road treatments to plowing, which takes about twice the manpower.

Working in the city's favor are the warm temperatures from early in the week. Heat retained by macadam may reduce or prevent accumulation on the roads.

"We're prepared to deal with whatever happens, and the complications of it happening before Thanksgiving, one of the busiest travel days of the year," Alkhal said.

Snow can lead to power outages, a distressing notion to people who are hosting Thanksgiving meals. PPL has repair crews and contractors ready to repair any outages, said spokesman Bryan Hay.

The utility has invested millions of dollars in reliability improvements over the past several years, including additional tree-trimming to prevent downed power lines, Hay said.

"Keeping trees away from power lines is one of the important tools to improve reliability for customers," he said. " We have been doing more tree trimming work in recent years. Tree-related outages were down 43 percent last year, compared to previous years. That work is clearly making a difference."

PPL experienced record outages during an October 2012 snowstorm. The snow was heavy and wet and trees still had their leaves, resulting in many more limbs falling on power lines than in a typical winter storm.

The snow from this storm is expected to be heavy and wet too, but the trees, fortunately, are bare.

Customers should report outages by calling 800-DIAL-PPL because it helps PPL zero in on the cause, Hay said. The utility's PPL Alert program can provide outage updates via text message, email and phone. It can be found on the utility's website at http://www.pplelectric.com.

LANTA buses are at the mercy of road conditions, said Owen O'Neil, the transit agency's executive director. The agency will have supervisors out driving the routes and will listen to drivers' assessments of road conditions to determine whether to halt or curtail service, he said.

"They do have a harder time getting up slopes and then down slopes," he said. " If you are going down a slope and you start to slide, its harder to stop a bus than a car."

If LANTA sees road conditions deteriorating to the point where service must be halted, it will issue alerts on its website, Facebook page and via Twitter account @LANTALV. The transit agency likes to give a few hours notice to give riders time to leave work early to avoid getting stranded, O'Neil said.

Tom JeBran, president of Trans-Bridge Lines in Bethlehem, which runs buses for commuters and travelers from the Lehigh Valley to New York City, said bus company workers are prepared.

"We have a lot of extra buses waiting; we have managers stationed in New York," said JeBran. "We're just going to manage it the best way we can."